Ormazabal present at one of the largest hybrid renewable power plants in the southern hemisphere

Port Augusta Renewable Energy Park (PAREP) is Iberdrola’s first renewable energy park in Australia, a pioneering project that constitutes one of the largest hybrid renewable power plants in the southern hemisphere.

PAREP has 50 wind turbines and 250,000 solar panels, together with the corresponding infrastructure, to produce a total installed capacity of almost 320 MW of clean renewable energy. It generates enough clean energy to meet the annual needs of 180,000 Australian homes, helping to reduce electricity prices for consumers and decarbonize the economy with annual emissions savings of approximately 400,000 metric tons of CO2.

Large-scale hybrid projects like PAREP, which encompass wind and solar generation, require meticulous planning and execution to ensure project success within time and budget. This required close collaboration and open communication between all stakeholders: EPCist Elecnor, substation manufacturer PSD Energy, and Ormazabal.

Furthermore, grid connection in Australia has become particularly complicated since the South Australian blackout in September 2016, which resulted in significant changes to the National Electricity Rules (NER), which dictate the conditions surrounding connection to the National Electricity Market (NEM).

Ormazabal supplied switchgear for this project, including 31 units of our cpg.0 primary switchgear for the grid connection station, split across 3 separate, interconnected switchboards in a combined 25-meter-long distribution hall. In addition, our scope of work also included cooperation with substation manufacturer PSD Energy with the joint objective of delivering complete and tested substation equipment to the manufacturing facility before shipment to the remote Port Augusta site, approximately 300 km away. The project also benefited from the recruitment of local personnel to carry out the switchgear installation under the direct supervision of Ormazabal. The installation of the 31 primary switchgear, including the FAT, was completed within 4 weeks.

“The main challenge of the project was the flexibility required in a rapidly changing environment. Ormazabal helped us enormously with its ability to provide rapid responses to customer queries in a collaborative and proactive manner,” says Carlos Felipe del Valle Sierra, Project Manager at Elecnor. Our extensive experience in providing connection points has allowed us to take a flexible and pragmatic approach to delivering a timely project outcome, remaining flexible throughout the project duration to accommodate changes in approach in a rapidly evolving environment.